


kingdom

by inkwelled



Series: pieces [6]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Ballroom Dancing, CatradoraWeek2018, Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Forbidden Love, Minor Character Death, The Royal Navy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-07 02:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17357054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkwelled/pseuds/inkwelled
Summary: Catra turns to her with a deadpan expression. "Princess Adora, we both know that wouldn't be proper. I'm in my place.""Your place doesn't matter," Adora says forcefully.or— adora is a princess with an affinity for her personal guard, catra. day six; free will/fate





	kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration from [this](https://promptsforthestrugglingauthor.tumblr.com/post/172384470876/writing-prompt-441), [this](https://the-modern-typewriter.tumblr.com/post/168297097663/do-you-have-any-prompt-about-a-kingprince-and-his), and [this](https://the-modern-typewriter.tumblr.com/post/160190824983/prince-prompts). rankings for the royal guard taken from [this](https://stratics.com/threads/royal-guard-ranks-and-promotion.214279/).
> 
> this took me less time than expected. cheers!

“It's my birthright to be high queen one day,” she says as she traces the bruise with trembling fingers, “I’m supposed to protect a country and I can’t even protect you."

Catra winces when the washcloth scrapes at the middle of the wound. Hushed, Adora apologizes. Silence falls.

"What happened?"

"I fell during training," Catra shrugs. Her shoulders fall short.

Adora's eyebrows furrow and she sets down the washcloth. "Are you lying? You're always careful during drills."

Catra fists her hands in her lap and refuses to look at her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me what happened. That's an order, as your princess." She hates pulling rank but she's reaching out beseechingly with whatever she has. " _Please,_  Catra, I need to help - I _want_  to know."

“Oh, so you’re throwing orders now?”

“I didn’t mean -” Adora wants to roar with frustration, she wants to pull her best friend close and never let this be a repeat. She wants to know if this is a regular thing she's never noticed before.

Surely this hasn't happened before, surely she would have noticed?

“Please, Catra, tell me. Not as your princess, but as your friend.”

Catra swallows and looks down, ducking away from the touch.

“ _As_ your friend might be the problem,” she says, so quiet that Adora has to lean closer to hear her, “You’re a princess, I’m an orphan brought in under the sympathy of the royals. I have no claim, no title, no reason to be here. I'm your pet. We're not kids anymore, it’s - I should know my place.”

“Catra, you're not my pet and _know your place?”_  Adora has to force herself to stay calm. “What do you mean, know your place-”

_Oh god._

The bruise. That was why, wasn’t it?

Resolve hardens in her chest. She sweeps to her feet, disregarding the mud sticking to the bottom of her skirts. She's always hated this dress, anyway.

"Your place is by my side as my personal guard," she says forcefully, channeling every diction lesson she's ever had. Shoulders straight, chin held high, eye contact. "I will not have a member of my royal guard treated this way. Lieutenant Catra, who did this to you?"

Fury burns bright in Catra's eyes. Her lip curls in anger.

"I don't want your pity, princess," she spits. "I can earn that ranking on my own, at no expense to you. I said I'm fine; now if you'll excuse me. My rounds are about to start."

Princess Adora is left gaping as her best friend and closest companion all but runs off after bowing.

 

 

Three sturdy knocks on the door. She doesn't look up. "Come in."

"Princess Adora."

"First Sergeant Catra. What brings you here?"

"Permission to speak freely, your majesty?"

"Granted," she says and turns the page. She can't bear to make eye contact, two weeks of tension pulling the room's air taunt. "State your business."

"Have I done something to offend you, princess?”  
  
“Offend me?” Although every part of her longs to, Adora can't find it in herself to look up. She can't. Her heart would pound so hard she knows her father and every person in the Alliance would hear. She can still hear the disappointed lilt of her father's voice in his study this morning. “Of course not.”

She can feel Catra studying her.

 _Damn it._ Her best friend could always see right through her, studying what she could of his expression.

“It’s just that I…cannot bear the thought of having troubled you, my lady,” she continues. Although she knows she shouldn't, Catra takes a step deeper into the princess' study, closing the door behind her.

She folds her hands respectfully. “I know you are very busy with your studies and the kingdom but-” _but you’ve been avoiding me._

It was true. Even if it wasn’t the type of accusation tossed at one’s princess.

Adora forces herself to breathe. Forces herself to look up, feels her stomach bottom out with a treacherous jolt. “I assure you, you could not offend me if you tried.”

It came out far too soft, damn it all.

She's always been soft with Catra.

 _To_ Catra.

 _Your weakness,_  her father chides in her mind. A flush paints her cheeks and she ducks her head because he is right.

_Your mother is my weakness, we all have one. Yours is the soldier._

_I don't know what you're talking about._

She remembers his small smile contradicting the hardened look in his eye. _Control it. You cannot let it get the best of you, Adora. You are a princess, a high-queen in training._

_Yes, father._

 

 

_Do better. Do not disappoint me._

_Yes, father._

 

 

“Would it kill you to relax?” Adora teases.

The ballroom is stifling. On the dancefloor, masses of bodies are pressed together and spinning to the live band high above on the second level.

Adora doesn't notice a single once, reclining against the back wall.

She looks out on the crowd. For now, she seems to have lost the latest gaggle of men and women vying for her hand. _Thank God._

Without moving, Sergeant Major Catra nods. “Probably,” she replies, eyes trained on the ballroom. “Likely it would kill you too. Preventing that is my job description, my lady."

A smile flashed across the princess' face. “I’ll risk it,” she says and holds out a hand. “Dance with me.”

Catra turns to her with a deadpan expression. "Princess Adora, we both know that wouldn't be proper. I'm in my place."

"Your place doesn't matter," Adora says forcefully. She smooths down her skirt. "Worth a shot. See you after, Sergeant Major."

 _Wrong choice,_  her mind whispers. She can feel her father's eyes on her.

 

 

"I'm so sorry," Captain Catra of the Royal Guard whispers to her right.

This gown is too tight, corset strings pulled too tight. Or is it all in her head, her lungs? The halls of the palace are dark and silent, the servants merely ghosts. So much life - gone in a single night.

Her world, shattered in a single moment.

Her parent's bedroom - scrubbed clean of the horror left behind, reeking of chemicals and not her father's books, her mother's perfume - is now hers. She doesn't sleep. She doesn't care.

She knows the kingdom is watching. Behind the privacy of her black veil, she breaks.

She presses a kiss to the ebony coffin lid. The entire kingdom is in mourning - but do they deserve it? These were her parents more than they were the kingdom's monarchs - maybe they handed out food and waved to adoring crowds in the square but they kissed her scraped knees, let her sleep in their bed when nightmares raged. Taught her sword fighting. Smiled at her and said they were _proud._

High Queen Adora kneels, accepts the crown. Stands.

It's heavier than she remembers.

 

 

"It's not like you would ever wear it," she says and _oh_ , how she wishes that wasn't true.

She is a queen, the ruler of an entire planet. Her parents are six feet under, coffins close enough that she hopes they're watching over her together. She can only hope.

High Queen Adora Eternia the Third watches Captain Catra's lip tremble minutely.

And oh, how she longs she could kiss away those doubts.

It is not right, it is not what's required of her - so Adora does not. Her birthright, her born-duty is heavy on her shoulder like a vulture, wings shadowing every good thing she's ever had.

Ever loved.

She should be drafting a proclamation, her first as High Queen of this land, but finds she cannot focus.

She has just attended her parent's funeral.

She doesn't have to look to see how sympathetic Captain Catra's eyes are. She sighs. Black skirt brushing her legs, she stands and crosses the room. Already have discarded the veil, face scrubbed free of makeup. Barefoot.

Her father would be furious.

She can smell the freshly laundered and pressed starch of Captain Catra's uniform. The captain's curls are pulled back, highlighting the high cheekbones and rounded eyes, sun-kissed and dark skin from years and years of training in the elements.

Captain Catra is the best of the best, after all.

Her best friend.

Her protector.

Her unknown lover.

The sleeve of her mourning gown brushes the peak of Catra's straight-set shoulders. She stands there. Here, behind these four walls, their titles fall away.

Although she knows it will get her nowhere, Adora finds herself longing.

She longs, in this moment, to be nothing but Adora and Catra again. Roaming the halls and stealing pastries. Afternoons spent throwing mud at the soldiers from the turrets and laughing until their faces were red, evenings in the fields surrounding the castle.

High Queen Adora clears her throat.

That is another time, another lifetime.

It does not do to dwell on dreams.

"M'lady?"

She wishes Catra would stop looking at her _like that._

She cannot take it. The eyes of her people are upon her, to lead them into a new era of peace. She has inherited a crumbling, defenseless country and for a single heartbeat, anger bubbles in her chest.

"Go ahead," she inclines her head. In the case, glittering as if today and the day before and the week before hasn't happened, sits her mother's crown. The Queen's crown.

Her crown.

High Queen Adora forces down the bile in her throat when she thinks of how they never recovered her father's crown. It will stay forever lost - whatever ally she is forced to marry will wear their own crown. She wonders if even in death, her father wears it.

"Your Highness? I don't understand."

With a sigh, Adora removes the glass panel and takes the crown in her hands. The weight is more than she can remember whenever her mother insisted she wore it for practice - perhaps it is.

Then she was a bumbling princess, laughing too loud and able to wear her corset loose in the halls. Gowns in baby blues and shades of the palest lavenders, pinks and dark reds. Higher skirts, fewer petticoats, fewer regulations, and restrictions.

She turns to Captain Catra. "Kneel."

Despite the confusion clear in her eyes, the Captain does as she asked. After all, this is what she's worked for her entire life - the High Queen knows she does not _dare_  to disobey the High Queen.

Anything.

A shiver runs down her spine at that.

The one thing she truly wants, she _truly_  and _desperately_ wishes for, she cannot ask. Perhaps because she knows Catra will say yes - perhaps that is exactly why.

She cannot put her most trusted confident in that position.

"You will never wear it outside this room," Adora says mournfully and places the crown atop Catra's curls, voice dropping "but it doesn't make a difference in how I wish you could."

Her voice is small, too quiet and too subdued. Not the voice of a queen, of a monarch of a country with a war at her backdoor. Rather, it is the voice of a little girl who has just lost her parents and gained over two million souls she must account for.

It is cruel, but this is the closest distraction she can put her hands around.

Unlike her parents, unlike the centuries-old tradition that waits for her outside, she can touch Catra. She can draw her into a hug, smell the hay that clings to the Captain's skin from early-morning training.

"Rise."

Neither one mentions the tremble in her voice, as fine as the wobbling of her heart, broken open and left to bleed slowly. Inside her ribs, her heart beats more lethargically with each moment, because in front of her is a future she cannot have.

She should not entertain the impossible.

Faltering in her step is her new normal.

High Queen Adora readjusts the crowns. Swallows. “No one will ever see you like this except me.” Too insolent, too beautiful - and entirely hers.

Selfishly, she wishes the crown to be Catra's.

High Queen Regent isn't a title suited for her lover.

She stays quiet. Captain Catra rises, leaves the room after High Queen Adora removes the crown.

 

 

It's not that High Queen Adora the Third doesn't care for her husband - it's that he doesn't love her. She's perfectly fine with that, she has her own matters.

Captain Catra, she's found, is an early riser. Even earlier than her.

"Good morning my queen," Catra says quietly. Adora smiles, nudges her cheek with her nose. Sunlight streams in through the open curtains, bathing every in a warm, heady glow.

"Good morning, my protector."

High King Seamus has his own mistress. She's met Lady Meredith, she's stubborn and headstrong, a sweet-layered pastry. The royal couple sleeps in separate rooms, don't talk about their lovers at breakfast when they both request it brought to their suites.

Captain Catra stretches. "Good morning to you too," she murmurs, leaning close to press a kiss to the bump beneath her lover's nightgown. "I wouldn't forget you."

Adora giggles, laying back against the pillows as Catra dresses for the day. "Stay," she says so quietly she almost doesn't hear it herself. "Stay, please, my love."

"Is that an order, my queen?"

"Yes," Adora says and Catra swallows her smile.


End file.
